Beto O'Rourke

They are trying to distract us while they steal elections and the very democracy that we should be fighting so hard to protect and expand.

We have got to fight back. And that fight now has to be in the United States Senate, where we need the For the People Act to become law, because it protects us against these forms of voter suppression.

This is a great opportunity for Texans to stand up and be counted, and try to stop that voter suppression that you were just telling your viewers about that is raging across this country and nowhere more so than in Texas.

This is progress. This is a step in the right direction. You mentioned it protects mail-in voting. It protects early voting for two weeks. It would end gerrymandering. It would make Election Day a national holiday. Those are four very…

We need to get out there in person and in public, no more tweeting, and Facebook, and calling folks. We got to show up and demonstrate. And I think that`s what moves things in this country.

We got to get this passed or we might very well lose democracy in Texas, and we might lose it in the country.

The people of West Virginia want that. And I`m confident that Senator Manchin, as he seeks bipartisanship and looks for a solution forward, will ultimately come to the conclusion that as Trey Martinez Fischer just said, federal action is…

That`s absolutely right, and I`ll tell you, as I travel the state of Texas, holding conversations on democracy and voting rights with my fellow Texans, they are meeting this crisis with the urgency it demands, and they`re asking for more…

I think that’s what Stacey and other civil rights and voting rights leaders are doing. We know President Biden wants to sign this into law.

I think they are just hoping you wouldn’t notice. That might be why. The Senate version was debated literally through the small hours of the night into the morning and was passed I think at 5:30 a.m. El Paso time. The next day in the…

You’re so right to point out the effect and the outcome and who ultimately is targeted and who ultimately will pay the price in our democracy. In Texas, it’s black voters, voters of color. It’s young voters. It’s the very old, those who…

If we lose democracy in this year in 2021, it’s not like we get another shot in 2022 or 2023. Once we lose it, it is gone forever.

We’ve got to stand for something. If as Americans we don’t stand for this democracy, that men and women in uniform fought and died for, that men and women in the civil rights era fought and died for then who are we at the end of the day?

This could spell the end of multiracial democracy that was guaranteed in 1965 by our fellow Texan, LBJ, when he signed into law the Voting Rights Act.

The incidence of election fraud in Texas is lower than the incidence of Texans being struck by lightning.

If the United States Senate can pass the voting rights bill known as the For The People Act, it would stop these provisions in Texas and Georgia and Florida, in other states that have adopted them.

I don't -- the excuses that, you know, they wrote in the legislation, that voting cannot begin till 1:00 p.m. And they said that was a typo, they really meant 11. That might almost be believable if there wasn't the pm that followed the one…

This is a time for Democrats to act. This is our moment of truth to step up and stand up for this country.

People understand just how precarious and important this all is and that it calls upon all of us to do what we can while we still have this window to act. Thanks, by the way, to the Texas State House Democrats who stopped that voter…

This is all taking place under the guise of, quote/unquote, standardizing our elections. Who can be against that? But we might have as the same questions of ourselves 100 years ago about the poll tasks, won’t that apply to everyone…

If we fail to do this and we only really have this summer to do this work and get it passed, we don’t only lose this window this year, or this cycle, we might very well, given the threats that are already against us, that we saw on display…

Given that fact, we have an extraordinary team on the ground.

We can’t sleep on this one. We can’t wait this out. We need action now.

We need more action from all of us. I mean certainly the people here in Texas, while there’s still time to try to stop this. But we need more from the Biden administration, and we need more from our friends in the United States Senate.

They must pass the For the People Act. That’s the Voting Rights Act of our day and our age, and it will do more than anything else to roll back these voter suppression efforts throughout this country right now.